Methodology Is Not the Study of How Methodists Do Things
Whene the word methodology comes up, most people know the prefix, method-, means a system of sorts. College grads know the suffix, -ology, has something to do with a field of study, as in biology, anthropology, and astrology. Most people don’t consider themselves to be methodologists until we get to talking about jigsaw puzzles. When we were kids, we solved jigsaw puzzles by following a system of guidelines while adhering to a strict set of principles, automatically and without giving any of it much thought.
What’s the first thing you do when you solve a jigsaw puzzle?
I’ve asked hundreds of people that question. Most tell me the first thing they do when they go about solving a jigsaw puzzle is start with the corners and the edges. A few say they begin with colors and shapes. They are all wrong. Those places are not where they begin.
So many people are preoccupied with thinking outside the box that they don’t bother to open it and look what’s inside
When I tell a group the first step in solving a jigsaw puzzle is opening the box, some complain loudly, saying of course everyone knows you have to open the box first. Yes, I say, and everyone knows you have to take the pieces out of the box. And everyone knows you have to turn them all right side up, too. These assumptions are so obvious that people skip ahead, not really thinking about what they’ve just been asked.
When challenged to think more thoroughly, we identify more “obvious” assumptions
What kind of space do we need to this jigsaw puzzle? The surface needs to be large, flat, horizontal, not wet, not sticky, and not in the back of a pickup truck going down a rutted, dusty road.
Keep on and you will discover we are not blindfolded or wearing mittens
Nor are we in a strong wind or a downpour or in the middle of a busy downtown intersection. Things like this are so obvious to all of us that we take them for granted. We quite naturally assume them to be so essential and so integral to doing jigsaw puzzles that we could not solve them otherwise and discussing them is nonsense.
In the sense that puzzles are mental exercises that test our ingenuity, knowledge, patience, and perseverance, behavioral science-level research is a specialized type of puzzle-solving
To solve business problems successfully, we need to take everything into account and not just the obvious things. We must determine everything that will affect our ability to solve our particular puzzle. Too much research these days is the equivalent of not having all the puzzle pieces and not turning them all right side up, either.
What if we didn’t follow an appropriate methodology?
What if we pulled two pieces out of the box at random, tried to fit them together, and threw them away when they didn’t? We’d never solve the puzzle, of course, because we threw away most of the pieces.
What if we pulled two pieces out at random, tried to fit them together, and threw them back in the box if they didn’t? This method would work because it doesn’t throw away any pieces, but we’d be there for weeks, so it’s impractical unless we have low aspirations and are being paid by the hour.
When can we begin to apply our strategies?
Only after we have completed all the necessary preliminary steps that most take for granted can we begin to apply our strategies of working first on corners, edges, and colors.
Jigsaw puzzles are easy compared to research puzzles
When it comes to solving research puzzles, far more can go wrong and our errors are much more costly. Here’s a quick comparison.
- With jigsaw puzzles, we are handed detailed photos of what the end result looks like. With research puzzles, there is no pretty picture on a box. With research, the final image emerges only after we have found the right pieces, collected them, and put enough of them together that we can see the big picture.
- With jigsaw puzzles, the pieces are all boxed up neatly in one place. With research puzzles, the pieces are scattered all over among different types of people doing different things in different places. We have to go find them and listen to them before we can begin to make sense of what they are telling us.
- With jigsaw puzzles, we are handed every one of the pieces. With research, we are handed none of the pieces. Even tougher, we don’t know how many puzzle pieces there are. We have to figure out how many bits we’ll need to collect before the big picture emerges in enough detail for us to understand what it is and what it means.
The more we can pre-determine how many research puzzle pieces we need and where we need to look for them, the better off we are
This is why real professionals begin solving research puzzles by deciding what knowledge we need and how want to be able use it.
No matter what puzzle you are working on, don’t start in the middle
Figure out where the real beginning is and take nothing for granted along the way. Figure out what methodologies you will use to solve your puzzles. Remember the best research methodologies produce results that are on target, on time, and on budget.
Bonus
What I always loved most about planning and conducting really top-notch consumer and market research was having to figure out what the real puzzle was before solving the obvious one.
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